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INTERVIEW WITH ANDERS M. SVENNING

11/5/2017

INTERVIEW WITH ANDERS M. SVENNING

Anders M. Svenning was born in New York. He started writing with seriousness at the age of nineteen and has now been published in many literary magazines throughout the United States and abroad. Some of the most recent include Dark Gothic Magazine, Adelaide Literary Magazine, and Degenerate Literature. He is the author of Nonpareil (Tule Fog Press), 50 States Poetry (Pansophic Press), and has a collection of short stories forthcoming, titled Verdant Grounds, Subtle Boundaries (Adelaide Books). The Phrenologist (Wapshott Press), a novella, is also a forthcoming piece by Anders M. Svenning. Anders M. Svenning lives in Palm City, Florida.

Welcome to Scarlet Leaf Review!

Q: Tell us a little about yourself and your background.

Anders M. Svenning is the name I put on my books. The middle initial stands for Mikael. It is a Scandinavian name and I would give you three dollars if you could email me a more Scandinavian name at [email protected], direct money order or Paypal. It’s up to you. In any case, I was born in Manhattan and was moved to Palm City, FL in 2001, with fervency. That is not to say it was a disagreeable move. The Floridian air was asphyxiating and the New Yorker, Anders M. Svenning, started taking on a bit of the Floridian wanton, which seems to be the evident everywhere I turn in this sub-tropic climate; but who is to make complaints when the climate really is an incubator for deviant ideas and creativity, which is a desirable attribute in the publishing industry today, and I don’t speak ill of either deviation or fervency. That Florida has accepted me into its virile bosom—I’m going to be honest with you—has left me rather divalent and with permanence.

Q: Which poets have inspired you and how? What was their impact on your work or your literary perspective?

The poet who has inspired me most—and there are many poets, from whom I take influence, and from whom I take inspiration—has got to be John Milton, the author of Paradise Lost and Comus, a masque, among other works. His works always seemed to me to have, not only in their content but also in their semantic outplay and severity, a whimsical affectation, which always seems to make itself prevalent in my own works.

Q: So, would you mind telling us what you have written so far?

I have written many stories. A few of them have been published. Three books, that is thrice books, have been published under the name Anders M. Svenning, which is my legal name. I don’t want to jiggle the facts. The three books, in the order they have been published are as follows, and each of them can be found at amazon.com. Search, under books, Anders M. Svenning, and you will find Nonpareil (Tule Fog Press), which is a horror short story collection; 50 States Poetry (Pansophic Press), which is a collection of fifty-one daffy poems; and my latest release, Verdant Grounds, Subtle Boundaries (Adelaide Books), which is a collection of literary short stories, of a seeming and thematic constituency—many of the characters in Verdant Grounds, Subtle Boundaries undergo changes as results of dream sequences.

Q: What are you working on at the minute? What’s it about?

I am working on a novella, titled Otus in Betulaceae. The novella is to be a part of a book called Téssera Istoríes, which means Four Stories, translated to English. The novella is a story, which takes the reader through three time periods—2017, 1923, and 1453—in the times of the Constantinople unrest. The title of the book, Téssera Istoríes, is Greek in its fundaments. The four stories to be included in the book are “We Are Inmate #881129,” which regards a Greek individual, his travels to the Albanian border and the subsequent occurrences, which take place in New York City, some years afterward; Otus in Betulaceae, which I have described, and which considers the Constantinople evacuations; “The Everest Prognosis,” which incorporates a bank robber, who makes sex with bank employees to gain access to the funds; and “The Sick and Final Ballad of Damselfly,” which exhibits a life of a damselfly in the context of Man. The last two stories of the four may become novellas. I have yet to apprehend the fullness of those two stories.

Q: How do you market your books, if you do the marketing yourself?

The Cold Stone Creamery and a car wash, called CarPro, in Stuart, FL and Palm City, FL, respectively, had a visitor, who was I, a couple of weeks ago; and I was successful in setting up in those venues book signings, which are to take place at peak hours, Friday and Saturday evening for the ice cream shop and a Saturday afternoon for the car wash joint. I aim to sell and sign a hundred copies in both venues, all taken into consideration.

Q: How successful has your quest for reviews been so far?

Reviews are a pursuit of which I have grown, in the recent months, quite wary. A reviewer may well read your book and find themselves reading the same words as the next reader, but they are letting register this or that for whatever reason, and the context of the story and the mysteriousness of the story is voided by a conceited, or if not conceited, cynical hand, which writes a review, the rating of which may not be a universal perspective. I tend to stay away from reviewers. A good word makes itself prevalent of its own accord. One need not search for literary encouragement.

Q: Where do you see publishing going in the future?

There is to be a generator. The generator will take feed. The generator is to recapitulate the imports; and then a story becomes manifest, much like madlibs. This may not happen for forty years.

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